Thursday, January 30, 2014

In Windows Sever 2012 R2, Microsoft introduced a new generation version of virtual machine. It is generation 2 virtual machine. Generation 2 virtual machine supports Windows 8, Windows Server 2012, Windows 8.1 and Windows Server 2012 R2. John Howard, Senior Program Manager in Hyper-V Team of Microsoft, wrote a series of Hyper-V generation 2 virtual machines to talk about all the thing in generation 2 virtual machines and He also wrote a PowerShell script, Convert-VMGeneration, to convert a generation 1 virtual machine to a generation 2 virtual machine. Basically, administrators cannot convert a generation 1 virtual machine to a generation 2 virtual machine directly. However, we can following the steps which are provided by John Howard to migrate a generation 1 virtual machine to a generation 2 virtual machine or using a PowerSehll script, Convert-VMGeneration, to do that.

Before you migrate a generation 1 virtual machine to a generation 2 virtual machine, there are some limitation that we should be aware.

Script requirement: It must run on Windows 8.1 or Windows Server 2012 R2 with Hyper-V feature